PPGAR: Week 10

The Saints are playing their best football in several years, despite the fact that Drew Brees is on pace to throw fewer than 30 touchdowns for the first time since 2007 and for fewer than 4,000 yards for the first time since 2005. The world was a lot different back in 2005 when our President was a bumbling orator, white female pop stars were trying to incorporate rap into their sound and North Korea was threatening to nuke America. Back then the Saints were just becoming the offense-only team that we’ve all come to love (for fantasy purposes, at least) over the last decade. It feels like every game they played finished 45-42 with Drew Brees passing for, like, 600 yards and six touchdowns. Now, with a vastly improved run game that includes two of the top ten players in terms of PPGAR, and a surprisingly stout defense, the Saints no longer have to rely so heavily on Brees. It looks like Sean Payton has finally realized that defense is more than just “what’s happening when Drew doesn’t have the ball.” Two years out from Rob Ryan’s reign of defensive ineptitude, the Saints look like a complete team on a mission.

Aside from that Saints RB duo, the rest of our top ten includes the usual suspects. DeAndre Hopkins, Leonard Fournette and Le’Veon Bell don’t seem to be falling out any time soon while Kareem Hunt looks like he may bounce back from a tough couple of weeks. In addition to posting fewer than 100 yards from scrimmage games in each of the last two weeks, Hunt is – somewhat surprisingly – entering this weeks’ contest against the Giants without having scored a touchdown in six weeks! That said, don’t be surprised if Hunt puts up huge numbers against a Giants team in a death spiral.